


The Circle of Life

by bjfic_archivist



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Angst, Canon, Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-11-18
Updated: 2003-11-21
Packaged: 2018-12-27 11:49:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12080469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bjfic_archivist/pseuds/bjfic_archivist
Summary: Before Brian and Justin... there was Brian and Justin.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note from IrishCaelan, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Brian_Justin_Fanfiction_Archive). To preserve the archive, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in September 2017. I posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/bjfic/profile).

**9:00 PM Ground Floor ER**

“Why can’t I go home?” asks Brian.

“Because we still don’t know if your whore of a sister is going to have surgery or not. You’re stuck here with the rest of us, little faggot,” a drunk Jack Kinney bellowed at everyone in earshot.

A sad Brian looked down and pulled at the red stripe on his white Nikes.

**9:15 PM 3rd Floor OB**

“Can’t I get some more pain medicine? Morphine maybe?” a very pregnant Jennifer Taylor asks the nurse. “Please, I really need something.”

**10:00 PM 3rd Floor Gyn**

The nurse reset the IV fluids and antibiotics. “I feel better. Why can’t I eat now?” Claire complained.

Brian pulled a Payday candybar out of his blue jean jacket and started eating. He wasn’t even hungry.

“Mom, Brian is eating in front of me.”

“Brian please,” Joan Kinney started, “your sister is laid up in a hospital bed with her female parts rotting away from infection. We still don’t know if they're going to have to fillet her open and cut them all out. The whole neighborhood must know by now. God knows she is probably barren for life. Show a little love.”

“I don’t believe in love. I believe in Pac-man,” said the lanky preteen with the brown bowl shaped hair cut.

“If I hear that one more time,” Jack Kinney started up, “I’m throwing that goddamn Atari out the window, you little fairy.”

**10:30 PM 3rd Floor Delivery Room**

“Her water broke an hour ago. Thick pea soup meconium,” the OB nurse said to the pediatrician.

“OHH!! God!!,” cried Jennifer. Craig stepped out.

“The head is coming…” the OB doctor says. 

**10:41PM 3rd Floor Resuscitation Room beside the Delivery Room.**

The pediatrician intubated the 8 lb baby boy, stuck a guaze over the tube and sucked the meconium out with her mouth. It was disgusting. “But hey,” the pediatrician thought, “its 1983. What do you expect? We don’t have nice things... like meconium aspirators or spell check.”

“Dayum, this baby is floppy," she said as she repositioned the blue baby in front of her. “Did the Mom just get drugs?”

“Over an hour ago,” said the nurse. 

“Narcan,” the pediatrician ordered.

**11:01 PM 3rd Floor Hallway by vending machine in route to 4th Floor Neonatal ICU**

Brian gets an orange crush. He turns around as 3 people in blue scrubs wheel an isolette with a baby in it down the hall. 

“Get the elevator,” a nurse yells at Brian. He quickly punches the up and the down button.

A commotion ensues:  
“Shit! The ET tube is out”  
“Are you sure?”  
“Look, you’re not moving his chest,” says a woman to a guy bagging.  
People move around and open up the isolette. Brian watches intently. The doctor pulls the tube out and the baby starts to pink up and cry.  
“Well, maybe the Narcan is doing something.”  
“You want to reintubate?   
“Naw, lets just get upstairs.”

Almost on cue, the elevator dings. Brian stands half in, so the door stays open as the crew wheels Baby Boy Taylor onto the elevator.

“Cool baby,” Brian says to the crew as the door closes.

**11:07 PM 3rd Floor Hallway**

Brian calls Mikey to find out what happened on the Incredible Hulk but what he really wants is for Debbie to come and get him. Then he sits down in the hallway and a single tear rolls down his face.


	2. The Circle of Life

**8:05 AM Emergency Department** (stopped using term room in 90’s)

Justin sits in his orange prison garb between two deputies paid overtime to escort prisoners to the local hospital. The pain in his chest just wasn’t getting better. All his tests had been fine so far. He was drinking Mylanta at this point, hoping it would help. Once the nurses were sure he wasn’t having a heart attack, they moved him out of the acute care bay. He was on a stretcher in a hallway, basically forgotten about. Oh, Justin had had his share of medical problems. He had really ballooned up after the colon cancer, from the steroids. But they managed to get it all. He had been cancer free for what, 3 years?. One doc wanted to reverse his colostomy now. Justin said no. It came in handy in prison.

An EMT found Brian’s body in the park that morning, on her day off. She started CPR and called 911 on her cell phone. They continued CPR all the way to the hospital, and went through the motions in the ER. It was pointless. He had been dead for several hours. The staff looked at the naked body. He was too skinny but beautiful, even dead. You know, most people don’t look good dead. That’s probably where the expression “looked like death warmed over” comes from, but there are a few exceptions. A baby with major deformities incompatible with life might look better dead; someone in severe pain struggling to breath might look better dead, but rarely does a pretty person look better dead. Brian Kinney looked better dead. Not because he found peace or some shit like that. There was just an absence of pain around him now—the withdrawal of a negative. It made things better by comparison.

There were scars over his wrist. He had slashed them deeply, but not before swallowing a potpourri of prescription drugs. He went through a box of his mother’s possessions. Claire brought them over years before. He grabbed two bottles of her blood pressure pills. Why Claire would think Brian would want these as a reminder of his Mom is beyond me. She kept everything of value. Things left in the drawers went to Brian. There was a bottle of aspirin he swiped from Debbie. She wondered why he came by, it had been so long. Gus’s girlfriend always kept her Ritalin over the kitchen sink in their little apartment. Brian only took one pill. It wasn’t missed. Gus really didn’t do drugs and was quite healthy. Physically healthy, that is. From Lindsey’s purse, a bottle of Zoloft. Then, Brian went back and for good measure grabbed something she took for migraines and something else, he hadn’t heard of. Kinda funny, it was the brand name for some estrogen replacement drug. Yes, Brian Kinney died of an estrogen overdose.

He couldn’t bring himself to see Michael. So he just laid on the floor and smoked weed by himself, before going to the park. He washed down the pills with a bottle of Jack, because Brian Kinney was a red neck at heart. OK, a red neck drama queen, but still the red neck. Why else would he shotgun a cigarette with his teenage boyfriend? Or sit at the counter of the diner in his Armani suit and pick his teeth.? Take a sledgehammer to the lock on the backroom? The list goes on. In his later years, he would get drunk and sang Hank Williams songs under his breath. Once, he even fucked Kid Rock. So of course, the redneck drama queen would kill himself in a public place with pills from everyone that had been important in his life.

In the park, his wrist bled and all, but not the way he wanted them to. Brian was nauseous by that point, so he just shut his eyes. Ever have a continental breakfast? It is just coffee and a doughnut. Brian got a continental code: some bagging, chest compressions, IV attempts, a round of drugs down the tube. Really, it was more than he deserved. The last nurse to leave pulled the curtain around Brian. Someone would come back later and clean the area and take the body to the morgue.

Justin heard part of the code from the hallway. Maybe that's why he didn't keep complaining even though his chest pain wasn't better, he knew something was going on. On his way back to prison, Justin passed by the drawn curtain. He didn’t see Brian’s body. He didn’t see the scarf on the floor.


End file.
